Big Bang Cosmology - Miscellaneous

1. Are galaxies only moving apart of is there a sideways 'flow' to them as well? 2. Is there 'dark matter' that is really not matter in the universe? 3. Where does the energy to accelerate the expansion of the universe come from? 4. If the universe is expanding into nothingness, isn't 'Nothingness' something? 5. Is the Big Bang expansion really accelerating? 6. Are distant objects actually smaller than they appear? 7. How big can the universe safely become? 8. Will the expansion of the universe ever slow down to zero? 9. Why are there 'blue dwarf galaxies' at 10 billion light years if everything is supposed to be red-shifted in color? 10. How can an infinite universe expand? 11. Could some of the 'missing mass' in the universe be in the cosmic background radiation itself? 12. How does the discovery of the Cosmological Constant relate to missing mass and an open universe? 13. How could the writers of the Qur'an 1400 years ago know that when the universe reaches its maximum size we will have Judgment Day? 14. How can we actually prove that we are not at the center of the big bang? 15. How can you tell the difference between gravitational and doppler shifts?

16. Astronomers create maps and models of the universe, but thay are always of where things were not where they are. How can you create a model of the universe from such incomplete data that is not 'sy 17. When you look into space, what is the black stuff you see between the stars? 18. Is it just a curiosity that the rate at which the moon is receeding from the earth is nearly the same as the Hubble Constant? 19. What will happen to our own experience of space if/when the universe begins to collapse? 20. Exactly where in Big Bang cosmology does it say that local space does not expand? 21. Is the expansion of the universe accelerating? 22. Is there a fifth force causing the universe to expand more rapidly? 23. Is any time dilation seen in the distant supernova used in studying the expansion of the universe? 24. Has any time dilation been detected in the distant supernova used to measure the expansion of the universe? 25. How much of the cosmic background signal can you see in the 'noise' on your TV screen? 26. If nothing physical can be infinite, why isn't the universe finite? 27. If there is no unique frame of reference in the universe, why do we have a specific speed with respect to the cosmic background radiation? 28. What did people think of the universe in 1897? 29. When the universe collapses, will light continue outward? 30. Does the universe expand into a 4th spatial dimension? 31. If the Big bang happened 15 billion years ago, why did the earth only form recently?

32. If we could see the edge of the universe, what would we see now? 33. Why doesn't the universe have a center? 34. Will our universe expand and bump into other universes? 35. What is on the other side of the expanding universe? 36. Why are galaxies colliding if the universe is expanding? 37. What word is used to describe everything outside our universe? 38. Could an external universe affect part of ours by its gravity? 39. If the universe is infinite, how can there be other universes outside it? 40. Could there be other universes outside of our own? 41. Why is the universe expanding if gravity is an attractive force? 42. Does interstellar dust have anything to do with the cosmological redshift? 43. If the Big Bang happened at one point, why are galaxies not expanding at different speeds? 44. If the universe is open, does it have infinite mass? 45. Does the Oort cloud around every star account for dark matter? 46. If I see two quasars 15 billion light years from us at opposite parts of the sky, how can the universe be only 10 billion years old when they are 30 billion light years apart? 47. Is there nothingness outside of our visible universe? 48. Why are there so many different estimates for the distances to quasars and the size of the universe? 49. If an observed galaxy at 15 billion light years is actually 30 billion light years away, does that mean the universe is twice as old? 50. If the cosmic background radiation comes from everywhere in space does that mean it has no source?

51. How do astronomers measure the temperature of the cosmic background radiation without using a thermometer? 52. Does the cosmological redshift mean that the universe is now expanding more slowly that it used to long ago? 53. If al the galaxies are flying away from us, are we in the center of the universe? 54. How do you calculate the distance to an object at a redshift of 5.0? 55. Will the limits to the visible universe expand indefinitely? 56. What is an 'antipode' in cosmology and does one exist in our universe? 57. What would an observer outside our visible universe see if they looked in the direction of the Milky Way? 58. Is there any evidence that the Hubble law is not a linear relation between distance and expansion speed? 59. How is Hubble's Constant derived from Newtonian physics? 60. How can we see light from a galaxy 14 billion light years away if the universe is 14 billion years old? 61. Where can I get a book that discusses the cosmic microwave background? 62. Does Stephen Hawking think the universe is open or closed? 63. If the universe is open and infinite, what is it expanding into? 64. Are redshifts really quantized? 65. If the universe exploded from a small piece of space why ate distant galaxies moving so fast? 66. Does the value of Hubble's Constant depend on the galaxies outside our visible universe? 67. Is the universe expanding the same way in all directions?

68. If the ultimate fate of our universe is so bleak, what then is its purpose? 69. Could the universe be rotating, and if so, with respect to what? 70. Has the 'old' age estimate of 10-20 billion years been replaced by a 'new' age estimate of 8-12 billion years for the age of the universe? 71. Why is the universe expanding if gravity is an attractive force? 72. What will the far future be like? 73. Would Dark matter go away if Newton's Law of Gravity were incorrect at intergalactic distances? 74. How fast is the universe expanding? 75. Have astronomers found galaxies with no redshifts? 76. How do we really know that we are missing 90 percent of the matter in the universe? 77. How is it possible that, looking out at the universe in any direction, that this lets us see what happened at the Big Bang which was a specific point in space? 78. How big is the universe? 79. If the Big Bang happened in an infinite nothingness, the universe must have an expanding edge, right? 80. Can we find a center to the Big Bang by looking at how distant quasars are moving? 81. Does the universe really have a top and a bottom as was recently discovered? 82. What is the universe expanding into? 83. How can a galaxy be 8 - 10 billion light years away, but still be 100 million years old and be detectable today? 84. How fast is the visible universe expanding? 85. Why isn't the night filled with stars as bright as the daytime sky?

86. What is a 'light horizon' and does this mean there are things in the universe permanently hidden from us? 87. What does the 'anisotropy' of the cosmic background radiation tell astronomers? 88. Do galaxies travel parallel to each other, or in a way that can be used to figure out where the Big Bang happened in space? 89. I recently heard there is a unique direction to space. What does this mean? 90. How were the distances to the Hubble Deep Field galaxies determined? 91. If the Hubble Deep Field shows galaxies 14 billion light years away, is the edge of the universe 28 billion light years distant? 92. How do we know the universe can expand faster than light if we can never see it? 93. How do galaxies get the energy to escape each other according to Hubble's Theory? 94. Stephen Hawking says the universe has no boundary, so what is it that is expanding? 95. If the universe is expanding, it has a boundary, so what is at the boundary? 96. What are the consequences of the universe having a preferred axis? 97. Why does it make a difference is a neutrino has a rest mass if it carries energy anyway? 98. What are the speculations about the future of the universe? 99. Is the expansion of the universe slowing down right now? 100. Will astronomers need the cosmological constant to reconcile the ages of old stars and the universe? 101. How is it possible for the energy in the cosmic background radiation to remain constant as the universe expands?

102. Why isn't an oscillating universe very likely? 103. What is the universe a part of? 104. Is the total energy of the universe decreasing because of the redshift? 105. If space increased faster than light moments after the Big Bang, why do we see anything near us in space at all? 106. Are galaxies only moving apart of is there a sideways 'flow' to them as well? 107.Does Stephen Hawking think the universe is open or closed?

1
Are galaxies only moving apart of is there a sideways 'flow' to them as well? At the largest scales, where the rate of cosmological expansion is measured in 10s of thousands of kilometers/sec, the random motions of galaxies inside their local clusters ( 300 - 1000 km/sec) is unimportant, and at these 'cosmological scales' ( 10,000/65 = 150 megaparsecs or larger) the motion is expected to be with-theflow of the expansion. However, there have been a few studies that have claimed to have detected a 'non-Hubble' flow to the most distant galaxies out to 300 megaparsecs. The flow of our local universe may not be completely random, but may have a systematic direction towards the so- called Great Attractor. If this is eventually confirmed, it could indicate that the universe at the largest scales is not expanding exactly the way a truly uniform, Big Bang would have predicted. Still, these motions are produced by gravitational forces, and at a current age of something like 15 billion years, there has been more than enough time for deviations from Big Bang expansion to have built-up over scales of 1 billion light years or more! What will settle this is better observations, because the Great Attractor flow is based on the speeds of only a few dozen large clusters of galaxies. Also, computer modeling will be able to tell us what kind of flow speeds we could expect to detect in a realistic universe model, and at a particular scale. This kind of work is just beginning, so we will have to wait and see.

2
Is there 'dark matter' that is really not matter in the universe?

Possibly. The kinds of universes that are consistent with the data we have right now, require that about 60 percent or so of the 'critical density' is in the form of the cosmological constant...recently detected for the first time...and the remaining is in some form of 'matter'. But, Big Bang cosmology says that the hydrogen/helium abundance of the universe is consistent only with familiar matter contributing no more than about 1 percent of the critical density. This means that 100% - 70% -1% = 29% or so is in some type of 'matter' that cannot be made from quarks ( protons or neutrons). This is what astronomers call 'dark matter' but it is recognized not to be matter of the usual type. Candidates include things like neutrinos and other 'non-quark' particles. Can black holes be dark matter? Not really. If the black holes formed AFTER the hydrogen/helium ratio was fixed, then the quarks that went into them have already been 'counted' in the Big Bang to produce the 1% limit consistent with the observed abundances. Luminous stars and gas contribute about 0.5% to the known forms of 'baryonic matter' in the universe, so black holes could contribute at most the other 0.5 % or so. This would help explain the dynamics of some galaxies which seem to be spinning faster than they should given the amount of luminous matter they have. But genuine dark matter cannot be explained using black holes. You need some other ingredient.

3
Where does the energy to accelerate the expansion of the universe come from? It comes from the vacuum.

The best explanation we have right now, is that Einstein was right when he proposed that there was a 'Cosmological Constant' effect which is a new property of empty space. Physicists have known since the 1940's that what we intuitively call empty space is not really empty at all. There are hidden particles and fields which constantly come and go within it which cannot be detected directly, but which can be inferred by studying the motion and properties of sub-atomic particles. The cosmological constant is the result of a new kind of field in nature which exists in the vacuum state, and which on the cosmological scales given the vacuum a net energy. This energy, however, is unlike any kind of energy we have previously studied. The way it works, say the theorists, is that it produces a constant pressure in every cubic centimeter of space no matter if space is expanding. Physical gas pressure, on the other hand, would decrease as you increased the volume of space. So, this new vacuum pressure causes the expansion of the universe to accelerate as the universe grows. This is currently the only theoretical explanation we have for what is going on, and this explanation is even older than big bang cosmology itself because Einstein proposed it back in 1915, but big bang cosmology didn't come onto the scene until the early 1920's. Big bang cosmology has always had this effect as part of its 'general cosmological solution', but the cosmological constant has come in and out of fashion since then, mainly because no one has ever convincingly shown that it exists. In 1998, the Cosmology Supernova Program gave us this evidence in a very convincing way, for the first time.

4
If the universe is expanding into nothingness, isn't 'Nothingness' something? Yes and no.

The universe is expanding, but the only theory that describes how this works is Einstein's Theory of General Relativity developed in 1915. Because this theory has been tested and found to hold up well, at least for the kinds of data we have access to, we have to trust what it says about the universe too...at least for now. GR, like so many of the other working theories we have about different aspects of nature ( quantum mechanics, special relativity and so on) are very hard for humans to work with because you cant use good-old human intuition to anticipate if their answers 'make sense' or not. When general relativity says that 'space stretches', we are left with a whole gaggle of human intuition problems just like the one you posed in this question. Big Bang cosmology is based on General Relativity, and there are two kinds of universes described by it. Closed-finite universes and open-infinite ones. In the closed universe ( which ours seems not to be according to the data we have) 3-d space is finite in volume at every instant, and in the far future, the eventual collapse will decrease this volume to zero and then there will be no more 3-d space in existence. General relativity says that there is no 'external space' in which our universe exists, so human intuition fails miserably. Human intuition DEMANDS that there exist an external space for our universe to 'float' in like a soap bubble, which is the physical analogy your mind is using anyway to understand the universe. In an open-infinite universe, 3-d space has ALWAYS been infinite, even at the 'birth' of the universe at the Big Bang. This model is favored by Inflationary Cosmology, in which our universe is just one of an infinite number of 'patches' of 3-d space that exist in some larger arena. The expansion of out particular patch, however, does not happen at the expense of the compaction of the space surrounding it. Again, this is an intuitive paradox that humans cannot resolve because it seems contradictory...though mathematically it derives from a higher logic than we are commonly familiar with in our limited world.

Is the Big Bang expansion really accelerating?

It sure looks that way! In fact, the discovery of this effect has been widely hailed as the Scientific Story of 1998 by a number of science journals. For several decades now, astronomers have dutifully included the socalled cosmological constant in just about every research paper, as a valid alternate to the uniformly expanding Big Bang cosmological model. For more information on this, see my article in Sky and Telescope magazine. Of course, Big Bang cosmology includes versions of the universe where this constant is zero, or has a non-zero value. Astronomers who perform studies of the observational aspects of the universe have placed limits to the Hubble Constant, the value of 'Omega' and the so-called deceleration parameter 'q', but they are also obliged to include in their analysis cosmological models that have non-zero values of the Cosmological Constant as well. What has changed in the last 5 years is that, from Hubble Space Telescope observations, astronomers studying such things as the number of gravitational lenses, and the dynamics of the clustering of galaxies over the last 5-10 billion years, have not ben able to say that the Cosmological Constant is zero. In fact, the very best they have ever been able to say is that, compared to the density of gravitating 'stuff' in the universe, this constant has a non-zero value that COULD be about as large as what visible and dark matter contribute to 'Omega'. That being the case, a non-zero value for this constant must mean that, at some level, the universe is not simply expanding and slowing down, but is expanding and slowing down more slowly than if purely gravitational influences were at work.

By 1997, the general picture was that the Hubble Constant was near 65 kilometers/sec per megaparsec to within 10 percent or so. This implied from the mathematics of Big Bang cosmology a specific 'critical density' of gravitating matter and energy in order for the universe to be a 'critical' universe balanced between collapse and eternal expansion. Now the question was whether all forms of identifiable gravitating stuff equalled this critical value or not. This inventoring of the matter-energy density of the visible universe has been going on for decades, and the current status of this is that only 1 percent of the critical density is in the form of luminous matter. However, in order to make distant clusters of galaxies stable and not fly apart, there must be some 'non-luminous' stuff out there too. In some clusters, there is so much of this 'dark matter' present that if it were present in the rest of the universe too it would amount to 40 percent or more of the critical density of the universe. Now, astronomers have to compare there data, not just with models that have 'dark matter' but also the Cosmological Constant because we have no way of ruling out the Cosmological Constant beforehand. When these models are compared against the data, the most consistent cosmologies that come out are those that have very little luminous matter ( stars, galaxies etc), lots of dark matter in two forms ( hot and cold ), and a cosmological constant. Still, although these kinds of studies seemed to require a Cosmological Constant, there was never any actual detection of the required physical effects of such a constant. According to the Einstein-DeSitter model, whenever such a factor is present in the equations, it will result in a peculiar phenomenon...the rapid acceleration of the distances between two gravitating bodies. Gravity of course caused deceleration between bodies and can cause them to fall towards each other.

According to a review article about this in the December 18, 1998 issue of the journal Science, astronomers have just now found the first evidence for the expected acceleration effect. In 1998, two teams of astronomers who have been studying very distant supernova with the Hubble Space Telescope calculated the rate of expansion of the universe with these very distant supernova in galaxies located several billion light years from Earth. Although the numerous supernova detected in nearby galaxies did show the usual Hubble Expansion, when these teams independently studied the most distant galaxies covered by their supernova, they found them to be 10-15 percent dimmer than expected based on their redshifts and distances estimated from the Hubble Expansion. As they found more supernovae at these distances, this effect did not go away as it would if it had ben a statistical fluke. What it means is that the distant supernova are farther away than they would be if the expansion has been a steady one over the last few billion years. This means that the universe has been expanding at an accelerating pace, not a steady one. This accelerated expansion is exactly what you would get if the Cosmological constant were non-zero, as other studies in the past had suggested, but not proved. According to their 'best fits' to the data they have, if the universe is at its critical density, then all forms of matter and energy ( luminous, dark, photons, neutrinos etc) amount to about 30 percent of the critical density, and the cosmological constant is about 70 percent of the total. Not only is the kind of matter we are made from a less than 1 percent 'impurity' with respect to the vast reservoirs of 'dark matter', but even dark matter itself doesn't completely determine the evolution and destiny of the universe.

Let me explain how the above logic works. Because Type 1A supernovae are produced by the detonation of white dwarfs, and because the maximum white dwarf mass is 1.4 times the Sun, these supernovae should all produce nearly the same peak luminosity at the maximum of the detonation. This provides the 'standard candle' to gauge distances. Now, the astronomers detect such a supernova in a distant galaxy, and measure its velocity spectroscopically. They then compare its apparent brightness against its luminosity to get its distance..say 2 billion light years. So far so good! Now there are three outcomes of this, but you have to keep in mind that what you are seeing is a snapshot of what the universe was like 2 billion years ago. the first outcome is that, when you divie the speed by the distance you get exacly the same value for the Hubble Constant as what we measure locally...65 km/sec/megaparsecs. This means that 2 billion years ago, the universe was expanding at the same rate it is now. the second possibility is that when you do the division you get a number that is bigger than 65 km/sec/mpc. This means that 2 billion years ago, the universe was expanding a bit faster than it is today, and so the universe is slowing down in its expansion as it gets OLDER. The third possibility is that you ge t a number that is smaller than 65 km/sec/mpc. This means that the universe was expanding slower 2 billion years ago than it is now, in other words the expansion is speeding up today. Another way of saying this is that objects sem to be farther away ( dimmer) than we would expect if the universe were expanding at the same rate then as it is now. It is this third case that SEEMS to be supported by the new data. There is a fly in the ointment though. According to Big Bang cosmology, the value of the Cosmological Constant is...a constant...no matter how old the universe gets. The density of matter and energy, however, continues to decline with time. Why is it that we happen to live at a time in the history of this universe when these two quantities have about equal value? Astronomers and physicists do not like these kinds of 'anthropic' coincidences because it singles out the observer, and the time that he makes the observation in the history of the universe, as being special in some way. Since the Copernican Revolution, we have been very nervous about throwing in the towel on these kinds of issues.

There is another possibility too. Perhaps the environment around these distant supernova is dustier that the typical environment around nearby Type 1A supernovae. Astronomers will have to look at many more of these distant events to sort out the issue of reddening from dust absorption, and the cosmological constant effect. In the next 2-5 years, there will be far more supernova detected, and new satellites flown by NASA to measure the Cosmological Constant and the other physical constants of the universe. If the 1998 findings are supported, we will have convincing evidence that we live in a very curious universe indeed!!

6
Are distant objects actually smaller than they appear? Actually, because of gravitational lensing, distant objects should appear larger than nearby ones if they are farther away than 5 billion light years or so. This effect is an important geometric test of Big Bang cosmology, and has actually been carried out by radio astronomers. Because of the curvature of space, as you look into the distance, the angular size of galaxies decreases steadily, then reaches a minimum size, then begins to increase again as you pass the 'curve' of the universe. Using the dimensions of specific features in active radio galaxies, such as the size of their radioemitting regions, and correcting for the change in density of the intergalactic or intracluster medium since the big bang, this effect has been seen.

7
How big can the universe safely become? Hmm...I think you are taking the 'expanding balloon' analogy for the universe a bit too seriously. There is nothing about gravity that suggests a limit can be reached where the universe will catastrophically 'rupture'. The universe can expand indefinitely, and safely!

8
Will the expansion of the universe ever slow down to zero? If the universe is truely 'open' it will continue to slow down in its expansion from the current 65 km/sec/mpc to near stand-still speeds in the single digits, but this will take 100s of billions of years. The speed will acheive a value as close to zero as you want in the mnear-eternity to come, but actual zero expansions will probably only be obtained in certain local regions where local and cosmological gravitational forces just balance. Even today, there are regions near the outskirts of many stable clusters of galaxies where the expansion speed is in fact zero!

9
Why are there 'blue dwarf galaxies' at 10 billion light years if everything is supposed to be red-shifted in color? In this context, 'blue' means that if you were traveling along with the dwarf galaxy and looking at its stellar populations, you would see that the stars combine to produce a 'rest frame' color for the galaxy that is rich in 'blue' or ultraviolet light. This is because there are many hot, young massive stars in the O-B spectral range compared to other stars in the galaxy. This is an indication that a 'burst' of massive star formation has been occurring in this galaxy for at least the last 10 million years or so. Our Milky Way has a color that is more or less typical of G-K-type stars because these are the dominant spectral types that contribute to the total luminosity of the galaxy. In this instance, the galaxy still has a very large redshift due to the expansion of the universe, but the intrinsic color is bluer than typical older galaxies around us. This terminology is equivalent to saying that I have a blue ball which I have thrown so fast that it has a sizable doppler redshift, but if I was riding along with the ball I would still see it as blue.

10
How can an infinite universe expand?

It's hard to think of how this can, or cannot, be without a firm understanding of what physical infinity means. There are many things about even mathematical infinity that lead us to marvel at it. For example, you can pack an infinite number of infinite 'things' into infinity. The subject of 'transfinite numbers' by Cantor is a must to read for anyone that thinks they understand what infinity should be like, intuitively! In cosmology, we are guided by what Einstein's mathematical theory of general relativity has to say about the physical universe. Among the 'big bang' cosmological solutions, are the ever-popular Open Universe models. These are all characterized, at ANY instant in cosmological history, by mathematically- infinite space-like surfaces ( 3-d space in other words). In these space-like surfaces, there are embedded stars, galaxies and other forms of gravitating matter and field, which make up an average density of 'stuff'. In the 'classical GR picture' on average each of these infinite numbers of stars and galaxies look similar to the populations of things we see around us. Now, in this model of the universe, everything is expanding in the same sense that the points on a balloon's surface move away from all other points as the balloon is inflated. General Relativity says that for infinite universes, the same kind of expansion occurrs. It is hard to visualize, because humans are not very good at visualizing infinity. Inflationary cosmology adds to this by saying that we live in a small pocket of some vaster spacetime. This pocked emerged from a tiny patch in the primordial spacetime and inflated to a vast size. By today, it extends 10^100 or more light years across. Physical conditions are similar throughout this patch today, but it is surrounded by other patches in a vaster tapestry where the physical conditions may be very different. Once the universe gets old enough, we will begin to see distant images from these other patches, and in the almost infinite future, we will at last see a very complex cosmos.

11
Could some of the 'missing mass' in the universe be in the cosmic background radiation itself? Hmmm...good try! The cosmic background radiation contributes about 400 photons per cubic centimeter at a wavelength of 1 centimeter. This means that the energy carried by each photon is ( E = h c/wavelength) = 6.6 x 10^-27 x 3 x 10^10/1.0 = 2 x 10^-16 ergs. From E = mc^2, this many ergs is equivalent to a mass of 2 x 10^-37 grams. Multiply this by 400 photons/cc and you get 9 x 10^-35 grams/cc which is about 1 million times less than the critical density of the universe ( Omega = 1) so, no, cosmic background photons contribute very little, and are approximately about 50,000 times less important than what stars and galaxies provide.

12
How does the discovery of the Cosmological Constant relate to missing mass and an open universe? In adding up all the different quantities that contribute to the density fo the universe and the famous 'Omega' factor, you get to add up the familiar forms of matter in stars, dark matter which is underluminous but still gravitates, and the cosmological constant which 'antigravitates'.

If you want Omega to equal 1.0, which is what most versions of inflationary big bang theory require, and what many astronomical observations are now pointing to, the sum seems to be about 0.1 for matter, 0.7 for the cosmological constant, and 0.3 for 'dark matter' With Omega = 1.0, you get an infinite open universe as a result. You also solve some details about the age of the universe compared to the age of the oldest stars we can detect with a cosmological constant that is not zero in a low-density matter universe.

13
How could the writers of the Qur'an 1400 years ago know that when the universe reaches its maximum size we will have Judgment Day? Well...the best model we have to account for the data we have is that the universe will continue to expand forever. There has never been evidence that suggests we live in a closed universe slated to recollapse in the future. So, your question is answered by saying that ancient writings either got the right answer or the wrong answer. In this instance they 'guessed' incorrectly so there is really no historical mystery to explain.

14
How can we actually prove that we are not at the center of the big bang?

This is actually very hard to do depending on what evidence you think makes the most sense. It is in exactly the same league as 'proving' from a simple observation that the earth orbits the sun. The only way heliocentrism is 'proven' experimentally is by the very SIMPLE explanation it provides for the observed phenomenon of stellar aberration. For cosmology, we have to use general relativity as the theory for large-scale gravity, and it says that in any spacetime where you see a uniform distance-redshift relationship, the observer must be living inside a universe that is, on average, homogeneous and isotropic meaning that matter is uniformly distributed everywhere. This can only lead to a cosmological model where no single observer is at the center of the universe, but who will FEEL they are because of the uniformity of the expansion ( redshift) that they see going on all around them. Every other observer will se exactly the same thing so there is no center. Now...do you feel that general relativity is compelling? It has passed every known test we have been able to throw at it so far so we have no a priori reason to disbelieve it, until some experimental result in the future tells us otherwise.

15
How do you tell the difference between gravitational and Doppler red shifts? This is a very important question in astronomy and cosmology. Both of these redshifts, along with the cosmological redshift, look exactly the same in terms of how they shift the spectral lines of an atom. Doppler shifts arise from the relative speed of an object compared to the local rest frame; gravitational redshifts do not depend on relative speeds at all but only on the difference in strength between the gravitational field where the light is emitted compared to where it is received; cosmological redshifts depend on the relative stretching of space between the time when the light was emitted and the time when it was received.

To distinguish between the three, you need to know something else about the object and its location. Objects inside the Milky Way cannot have a cosmological redshift because, buy definition, they are not at cosmological distance where this effect comes into play according to general relativity. Only doppler and gravitational redshifts are plausible possibilities. Any kind of gravitational redshift requires a strong gravitational field to produce it such as you would find near a neutron star or a black hole, and even so the amount of the shift that you could detect would only be equivalent to a few thousand kilometers per second of relative speed. Gas being ejected or falling into such an object would show both the doppler contribution of its infall speed, and the gravitational redshift of its infall for material very close to the object. Material farther away by, say, several million kilometers, would only show the doppler component because at these distances the gravitational field is very weak and only contributes a few kilometers/sec of less to the total redshift. For ordinary stars in the milky way, the doppler shift due to their relative motions of up to 500 kilometers/sec relative to the sun is the largest contributor, because the gravitational field they move within due to the rest of the Milky Way is insignificant. Also, the light they emit is gravitationally redshifted at the stellar surface by an amount equal to their surface escape speed ( about 20 km/sec) divided by the speed of light which equals 0.006 percent, so this factor is unimportant. Gravitational redshifts are only important over doppler and cosmological redshifts, when you a looking at material close to the black hole horizon distance on a compact object such as a neutron star or a black hole. For all other systems, it is unimportant compared to doppler and cosmological redshifts. The latter are important only for objects further away than a few million parsecs at which point the cosmological redshift ( 65 km/sec) becomes comparable to the typical relative speeds of galaxies within their respective clusters ( 300 km/sec).

16

Astronomers create maps and models of the universe, but they are always of where things were not where they are. How can you create a model of the universe from such incomplete data that is not 'synchronous'?

This is a very fundamental question in astronomy, and the answer depends on the particular system that you are trying to map. If you are interested in mapping objects within the Milky Way, the light travel time between the most distant stars and nebulae from the earth is no more than 100,000 years because the Milky Way is no more than about 100,000 light years across. That means the difference between where things appear to be right now, and where they actually are at this instant, is only out of sync by less than 100,000 years. For stellar evolution, this is a completely trivial amount of time because nothing of major importance happens in such a short time for the majority of stars similar in mass to the sun. As for positional differences, the maximum relative speeds of stars in the Milky Way is about 300 kilometers/second so that in 100,000 years, this amounts to a positional shift of 300 km x 100,000 yrs x 31,000,000 sec/yr = 100 light years for the most distant objects we can detect individually. Now, 100 light years compared to their maximum distance of 100,000 light years is a error of about 0.1 percent. Typically, the best distance estimates for objects within the Milky Way are uncertain to 10 percent or more. What this all means is that allowing for where objects are RIGHT NOW, introduces a correction to our maps of the Milky Way which is smaller than the uncertainties we already have to live with because of the imprecision of our standard distance estimates in the first place, so the correction is of no practical importance. Also, in terms of dynamics, gravity travels at the speed of light, so that it it is the locations of where things appear to be right now that is important to us, not where they actually are.

As for maps of the rest of the universe, because the redshifts of distant galaxies has to be interpreted via general relativity in order to obtain a distance and location, the time delay is automatically taken into consideration in producing a 'synchronous' model of the universe for a given 'cosmic time' since the big bang. Practically speaking, however, astronomers are now beginning to map the locations of galaxies out to several hundred million light years. Again, the relative speeds of these galaxies with respect to the Milky Way is about 2000 km/sec per 100 million light years of distance, and so in 100 million years, such galaxies have moved an additional 67,300 light years from where they appear to be right now, which is about equal to their own diameter. This is an 'error' of about 67,300/100,000,000 = 0.07 percent and must be compared to the typical distance estimation techniques which have a precision of no better than about 1 percent or so at best. Again, accounting for the light travel time position shift is a negligable error. For dynamical considerations, such as in modeling the evolution of a cluster of galaxies, only the relative positions of the member galaxies within a cluster is important, so the model we create for a cluster is based on where we see the galaxies as they appear now, and not where they actually are right now.

17
When you look into space, what is the black stuff you see between the stars?

We don't really know..honest! We call it 'space' or 'vacuum' or even 'spacetime', but the truth is that the 'stuff' between the stars that makes our universe 3 dimensional is a bit of a mystery. Einstein's general theory of relativity states that what we call 'space' and 'time' are just features of the gravitational field of the universe. They have no independent meaning or existence apart from the gravitational field itself. Physicists have known for decades that 'empty space' is far from empty, but contains virtual particles and fields that cause the forces we see and the properties of the particles we observe. At a deeper level, theorists have proposed that the geometry of the gravitational field itself provides all of the observed qualities of particles and fields in the universe much as in Euclidean geometry in a flat 2-dimensional plane, you can have an infinite number of polygons, but in flat 3-d space you only have 5 regular solids that are possible. The emptiness you see between the stars, even after you remove all the interstellar gas and dust, still contains within it enough 'information' coded in some way, to define all of the forces and particles we see in a unique way...and no other. This subject is very deep and complex, and one of the most actively explored subjects in modern physics today.

18
Is it just a curiosity that the rate at which the moon is receding from the earth is nearly the same as the Hubble Constant? The moon is drifting away from the earth at a rate of about 3.5 centimeters per year. The distance to the moon is about 350,000 kilometers or 1.17 x 10^- 14 megaparsecs. The recession speed of the moon is equal to 1.1 x 10^-12 kilometers/sec, so that dividing the two you get about 96 kilometers/sec/mpc. The current estimate for the Hubble Constant is 65 kilometers/sec/mpc. Does this mean that the space between the earth and moon is also expanding the way it is in the big bang? No.

The Hubble Constant, by simple dimensional analysis has the units of 1/time. The time constant for the universe to, say, double its scale by the cosmological process of the big bang is about 8 billion years or so, so that gives us a Hubble constant of the size we see. For the moon, the time it takes for its separation from the earth to double is also about the same length as 8 billion years so again you end up with 1/time being about what you see in that system. The underlying reasons for why these timescales exist is different and not related. It is more than a random coincidence, but it is less than a direct causal connection, because all we are saying is that the timescales ( H = 1/t) are comparable in size to within a factor of two.

19
What will happen to our own experience of space if/when the universe begins to collapse?

We will simply see the universe begin to get more crowded, but it will happen in a most peculiar way. If the collapse already started, say, 100 million years ago, we will look out into space and notice that instead of systematically increasing redshifts, the galaxies out to 100 million light years have systematic blue shifts that are highest locally and diminish to zero as we reach the 100 million light year limit. Galaxies further away than 100 million light years will have redshifts that start small and steadily grow in size with increasing distance as they do now. In time, this 100 million light years limit steadily increases by 1 light year per year until after a few billion years after the collapse has started, all of the galaxies out to several billion light years show only blue shifts. Powerful telescopes, however, can still detect the faint images of distant galaxies to 10 ,20 ...40 billion light years and see redshifts in the light from the most distant galaxies because the universe is about 50 billion years old at the point when the collapse phase begins. Eventually, nearby galaxies start crowding together and colliding into small numbers of super galaxies with trillions of stars, then even these huge systems begin to fall together as space contracts so that in the last few billion years of the universe you will be living inside a dense star system that extends millions of light years into space...but soon even these huge systems coelesce and all of space if filled by stars which steadily get closer and closer together until even the stars collide and you are left with a hot plasma filing space which is steadily getting hotter and hotter.

20
Exactly where in Big Bang cosmology does it say that local space does not expand?

The main assumption of Big Bang cosmological theory is that the universe can be described by a uniform, constant density whic, on average, describes all ther is to know about the large-scale properties of the universe in this theory. The distribution of mass does not depends on its location in space. Under that assumption, the mathematics define a single-parameter 'scale factor' whose size changes as a function of only one parameter, time. Clearly, this model does not describe space-time inside a solar system, or a galaxy, or a cluster of galaxies, because in these systems you cannot describe all of their essential physical properties just by a single density parameter. So, for these systems you use general relativity for a set of point particles embedded in a larger spacetime provided by the global 'cosmological' solution. Local space-time is then seen as a roughly flat, and unchanging asymptotic system modified by the time-dependent changes caused by the motion of matter as discrete point masses. To find the scale at which cosmological expansion has to be confronted, you look for the scale at which you CAN describe the distribution of mass by a single, average parameter. This scale is larger than a cluster of galaxies, and is also larger than superclusters. Anything smaller than about 100 megaparsecs is probably too small because the density and motion are not location independent. Another way of looking at this is to find the scale where the average density leads to a prediction for cosmological expansion that is faster than the average random motion within the largest system that can be recognized. Clusters of galaxies often have member galaxies that are moiving at 500 kilometers/sec or so, and for a Hubble Constant of 65 kilometers/sec/mpc, this means that at a scale of 7.7 megaparsecs or 25 million lightyears, you are right at the threshold where cosmological expansion between the cluster centers makes as much of a contribution to the dynamics of the system as the random, position-dependent internal velocities of the constituent particles ( galaxies).

21
Is the expansion of the universe accelerating?

It might be. In the past whenever I have received this question I have answered that, no, the expansion of the universe is slowing down. Astronomers have been working very hard to measure the density of the universe by detecting the gravitational influences of all forms of matter and energy that we can find in our visible universe. Today we seem to have reached a kind of impass where counting luminous matter in the form of stars, and other types of 'baryonic' matter ( made from protons and neutrons: quarks) which may be dark, leads to the conclusion that the universe has perhaps only a few percent of the matter it needs to prevent future unending expansion. This would mean that although the expansion of the universe was very fast and violent long ago, today it is slowing down, and will continue to do so for all time to come. The fly in the ointment has been that astronomers have also detected in distant clusters of galaxies a potentially new form of gravitating 'something' which is popularly called dark matter, although it may not be matter in the forms of baryons at all. But there is potentially a LOT of it, perhaps even 100 times as much of it as familiar baryonic matter. Still, adding even this to the total mix of the universe still gives you a universe whose expansion is slowing down today, though doing so slightly more quickly than for the pure-baryon universe. But that isn't all. Since Albert Einstein proposed it in 1915, and then retracted it as his biggest blunder in 1933, the 'cosmological constant' has come and gone in cosmological models, but astronomers out of fairness to testing theories, have always formally compared their data with big bang theories which drop this term, and which include its effects. This is a new kind of force in nature that derives from a new field in nature which is in some sense buried in the vacuum of space itself. It acts in a way opposite to gravity and causes space itself to expand even with no matter present to produce gravity. It is in essence an anti-gravity force. During the last few decades, and especially in the last 10 years, astronomers have been concerned that the ages for the oldest stars can sometimes seem older than the age of the universe based on the simplest cosmological models that DO NOT include the cosmological constant. By adding the cosmological constant, however, it is easy to make the ages agree depending on how large this anti-gravity term is. But does it really exist?

The most stringent limits I have read about involve counting the number of gravitational lenses among the faintest galaxies. This was done in the early 1900's by a 'Key Project' using the Hubble Space Telescope. They found that, compared to the density of matter in the universe, the amount of cosmological constant that could also be present and not affect the numbers of lensed systems was less than about 20 percent of the critical density. This, however, is more than 10 times the contribution made by matter to the gravitational field fo the universe. But this was only an upper limit and NOT a detection. Other methods for detecting the cosmological constant have led to mixed results, with no firm detection. This seems to have changed in the beginning of 1998 when two teams of astronomers investigating the expansion of the universe using supernova 1 billion light years away, announced that they had detected the cosmological constant itself...no upper limit. Their reasoning was that the distances they computed for these supernova from the cosmological expansion did not match the peak luminosities expected for these supernova given that they are a well- known type of supernova. This means that they are slightly farther away than ordinary big bang cosmology without the cosmological constant would have predicted. A big bang cosmology WITH such a cosmological constant would match this result however, but that means that the universe is expanding faster in the last billion years than predicted. This is exactly the 'space dilation' effect predicted for the cosmological constant, and implies that the expansion of the universe is actually speeding up!! Most astronomers still consider this a preliminary result, especially since it is only based on literally a handful of supernova. If...and this is a BIG if...further independent studies of distant supernova bare this out, then either there is something incorrect about the assumption that these supernova are 'standard candles' or we will have to accept the cosmological constant as a new ingredient to cosmology. It does not spell the end of big bang cosmology, because big bang cosmology already includes this new effect, however, astronomers have never been able to satisfy themselves that it is a real phenomenon rather than just an additional term in an equation which they otherwise had the freedom to dial to zero in our universe.

22
Is there a fifth force causing the universe to expand more rapidly? There may well be!! There have been many proposals for such a new force in nature, mainly proposed by physicists trying to develop new mathematical theories which combine the known particles and fields into a common explanatory ruberik. Some 'supersymmetry' theories have predicted new families of particles, among them new force-carriers which would behave in some ways like gravity, but with limited ranges. Experiments have been repeatedly attempted, but no clear indication of a new force has ever been conclusively detected over scales of meters to kilometers. Astronomers and physicists have searched off and on for indications in the many data sets for hints of a new gravity-like force, but to no avail. Like the infamous 'Planet-X', the 'fifth force' may simply not be there to find. That said, there is a fly in this ointment. Since Albert Einstein proposed a 'cosmological constant' to create a static universe, physicists have been increasingly drawn by their theories to working with such a 'blunder' as a real ingredient to the world. During the Inflationary Era, this anti-gravity force propelled the universe to dilating trillions of times in size in literally an instant of time...but then it vanished back into the vacuum as the universe continues to cool. Astronomers have felt compelled whenever comparing their measurements of the expansion of the universe to theoretical expectations, to always consider cosmological models that have some magnitude of a cosmological constant 'term' dialed into it, in addition to classical big bang cosmologies which do not contain this effect. No astronomers have ever claimed to have actually detected this new antigravity force that lurks in the void, only upper limits have been offered for this illusive ingredient even as late as 1996.

Recently, using distant supernova, several teams of astronomers have now gone on record as claiming an actual detection of this anti-gravity vacuum force which they claim is causing, or has caused, the universe's expansion to accelerate during at least the last few billion years. If this interpretation is confirmed, it will not only liberate cosmologists to formally include it in all future cosmological theories describing the present universe, but it will be the first detection of a new fundamental physical force, not by physicists but by astronomers. Although it will solve some thorny technical issues in observational cosmology, it will also present us with a new set of challenges. Not only may there be tremendous quantities of 'dark matter' in the universe, but there would now be mysterious forces emanating from the vacuum of space itself!

23
Is any time dilation seen in the distant supernova used in studying the expansion of the universe?

Not that can be easily identified. These supernova are, first of all, not located far enough away ( less than a redshift of 1.0) for significant general relativistic distortions to be detectable. To detect time dilation, you must first be able to identify a process in a distant object which has a well- defined natural 'clock rate'. The light curve of a supernova seems to be a promissing chronometer because the explosion rises to a peak then declines over the course of several months. The problem is that this is not really an accurate chronometer because the natural dispersion in these supernova light curves is wide enough to mask any simple relativistic effects. Having said this, there is one arena in which time dilation has possibly been detected, and this is in certain classes of gamma-ray bursts. These bursts have a millisecond to minute range in their 'light curves', and in the last few years a group of astronomers at the Goddard Space Flight Center and the Naval Research Laboratory have discovered that these light curves have durations in time that reflect significant amounts of time dilation. Since it is now believed that these bursts come from collisions between neutron stars producing blast waves traveling at nearly the speed of light, such relativistic effects seem to be consistent with each other.

24
Has any time dilation been detected in the distant supernova used to measure the expansion of the universe?

The recent Hubble Space Telescope investigations of distant 'Type IB' supernova have been used to measure the rate at which the expansion of the universe has been slowing down in the last few billion years. So far, only one supernova at a distance corresponding to a redshift greater than 0.5 has been detected in the 'high-z' searches for these supernova. But by using its peak luminosity as a standard candle, a distance to this supernova was independently determined. When compared to its redshift and 'recession velocity' due to the expansion of the universe, it was found that the expansion rate is practically the same as the 'Hubble Constant' determined by looking at nearby galaxies. This means that in the last few billion years, the expansion of the universe has not slowed down by a measureable amount, and this means that the universe looks as though it is destined to expand forever. No time dilation effect was measured from this observation because there is no fiducial moment in time against which one can assess whether such an effect has occurred. Time dilation can only be detected if you can identify some independent chronometer that you think is keeping 'proper time'.

25
How much of the cosmic background signal can you see in the 'noise' on your TV screen? I looked up the transmission frequencies of the major TV stations and they run from 54 megacycles ( channel 2) to 800 megacycles ( channel 69). The peak of the cosmic background radiation is at a wavelength of 1.1 millimeters and a frequency of 272 gigacycles ( 272,000 megacycles). Now, the cosmic background is a black body with a temperature of 2.7 K, so the distribution of its energy follows the socalled black body formula: 3

Av B(T,v) = -------------------( Bv) e - 1

where A is a constant, v = frequency and B = h/kT where h = Planck's Constant, k = Boltzman's Constant so that for v in cycles per second, B = 1.8 x 10^-11. The following table compares the brightness of the cosmic background radiation at several TV transmission frequencies: Channel Frequency B(T,v)/A

Channel 2

54 MHz

1.6 x 10^26

Channel 26

542 MHz

1.6 x 10^28

Channel 69

800 MHz

3.6 x 10^28

Cosmic background

272,000 MHz

1.6 x 10^32

What this means is that at the frequency of Channel 20, for example, the intensity of the cosmic background is 3.6 x 10^28/1.6 x 10^32 = 0.0002 times as intense as it is at its peak. Now, the NASA COBE satellite measured an intensity for the background of 1.15 x 10^-4 ergs per square centimeter per second per steradian per cm^-1. Your TV antenna would intercept this radiation from at most 1/2 the sky or 2pi ( = 6.282 steradians) and so for a 1 megahertz bandpass ( 3.3 x 10^-5 cm^-1) you get about 2.3 x 10^-8 ergs per centimeter squared per second. In terms of watts this is 2.3 x 10^-11 watts/centimeter square. How bright is the signal from a local TV station? Lets assume it broadcasts at 100,000 watts and is located about 10 miles from your TV set. Then 100,000 watts / 4 x pi x (10 kilometers)^2 represents an intensity of 8 x 10^-5 watts/square meter. So, your local radio station would produce a station about 4 million times brighter than the cosmic background radiation itself. This represents a ball park estimate and there are probably several factors of two floating around, but the point is that most of the 'snow' that you would see on a channel with no station broadcasting is produced by the electronics inside your TV set most likely, and the sensitivity of your TV set is the main factor. Now, if you had a satellite dish, it is a completely different story because now your collecting area for faint astronomical signals is a thousand times greater than the area of your typical TV antenna ( especially the built- in kind). The 'snow' on a channel with no transmitting station could actually consist of a significant amount of cosmic background radiation...but the actual amount would be hard to estimate without knowing the details of the Tv set and its receiver sensitivity. Still, tune your satellite TV to the highest frequency it can receive to maximize the brightness of the cosmic background signal, and some fraction of the 'snow' may be the background itself!!

26
If nothing physical can be infinite, why isn't the universe finite?

Although mathematics seems to be a good guide to codifying and understanding how nature operates, there is no evidence that the physical world slavishly adheres to every mathematical principle that humans can conceive of. One of these is the 'concept' of infinity. There are only a few domains where infinity could be expected to become a real, physical property...the infinite divisibility of space and time, the infinite spatial extent of the universe, the infinite span of time..to name a few. Black holes may also harbor 'infinities' called singularities...but it is almost universally expected that black hole singularities will disappear once a correct quantum theory of gravity is developed. This will also do away with the 'infinite divisibility of space and time' because a quantum limit will be set to the graininess of spacetime itself called the Planck scale. Time does not seem to have an infinite past extension because the Big Bang itself probably started time...and space...going. This leaves only one last domain in which 'infinity' could reappear physically, namely, the extent of the volume of space produced by the Big Bang. The question asks whether we cannot simply argue that space must be finite because no other physical infinity is known to exist. The answer is no. Whether space is infinite or finite is not a question of logic, but a question of whether for all small volumes of space, local gravity exceeds the motions of the bodies within it. The issue of the actual geometry of space is a question answerable by observation. If it so happens that the density of the universe..Omega..exceeds the critical value, then gravity will eventually win out and the universe will re-collapse. If Omega is less than critical, the universe will continue to expand indefinitely. But more than this, general relativity says that such a low-density universe is ALREADY infinite from literally the instant it was born since finite things cannot evolve into infinite things, but more particularly, the geometry of spacetime will not be a closed geometry at any instant. In this particular instance, the physical world can be for all measurable intents and purposes...infinite, but this infinity is hidden from us as thoroughly as though it were stuffed inside a black hole. What nature seems to tell us is that any conditions that hint at a true physical infinity are permanently hidden from direct observation. Why this is so is an interesting topic in general relativity.

27
If there is no unique frame of reference in the universe, why do we have a specific speed with respect to the cosmic background radiation? Because the cosmic background radiation has a zero net speed relative to the local expansion of the universe. In this frame, you are moving 'with the flow' of the universe which is actually a dilation effect rather than bulk motion. The Milky Way has a net relative motion with respect to the expansion ofthe universe because it is subject to the gravitational fields of nearby galaxies. This gives it a residual speed of about 300 kilometers/sec relative to the local Hubble expansion of the universe, and it is in this reference frame that the cosmological background radiation has zero relative speed. The only 'unique' reference frame in the universe is that reference frame where the expansion of the universe provides the only net 'motion'. This may violate special relativity, but not general relativity, because 'general' is better.

28
What did people think of the universe in 1897?

It was pretty small! The distances to what we now call galaxies were only established during the 1920's...and the famous Shapley-Curtis debate at the National Academy of Sciences ended the debate over how far away they were. During the 1890's our galaxy was only as big as proper motion surveys let us chart stellar positions...perhaps no more than a few hundred light years. The first model of our universe connected fuzzy galaxies and nebula together into 'forming solar systems'. The starry firmament and the Milky Way in the sky just showed stars to be a flat 'slab' suspended in the darkness.

29
When the universe collapses, will light continue outward? No. The path of light and matter would return to a Big Crunch because gfravity is so strong in a closed universe that space is bent completely around upon itself so nothing escapes from space into a larger void...assuming there is one.

30
Does the universe expand into a 4th spatial dimension?

Who knows? Why add another dimension to space when we have no experimental evidence what so ever that nature is this complex on the largest scales? That is the problem with all of these speculations about what is outside our universe. They all are unprovable and do violence with the only testable theory we have to describe such things...general relativity. Seems a big price to pay just to make our intuitions work better.

31
If the Big Bang happened 15 billion years ago, why did the earth only form recently? Just lucky I guess. Seriously, there is no known reason why a planet or a star would form at one particular time after the Big Bang, or another time. It is all random and there is nothing weird about it. If the Sun had formed 5 billion years, or 3.78965 billion years after the Big Bang, we would be wondering about that too.

32
If we could see the edge of the universe, what would we see now? The edge of our visible universe is simply a zone located 15 billion light years from us where light from galaxies is redshifted to longer and longer wavelengths, and you run out of objects to be seen at these distances. All you run into is the redshifted image of the cosmic background radiation...an imaged taken by the NASA COBE satellite.

33
Why doesn't the universe have a center? This is a very good question, and one that we expect has an answer because after all, wasn't the Big Bang just like all other explosions we know about? Unfortunately the answer is no. The Big Bang was not like any explosion we have ever seen, because the very gravitational forces that bound matter and energy together in the detonation, also curved space. THAT is the factor that always sneaks in, to render our intuitions irrelevant. Only general relativity is able to help us see the 'big picture' and that picture presents us with a universe in which all particles fly away from all other particles as the whole of space itself expands and dilates. There is no one center IN SPACE to this explosion, only a unique CENTER IN TIME for it, 15 billion years ago.

34
Will our universe expand and bump into other universes?

We don't really know what the universe looks like beyond the visible horizon we see around us, but all modern theories say there is plenty more space 'out there'. The most interesting prospect is described by Inflationary Big Bang cosmology. If the universe emerged from a quantum patch of energy in a primordial spacetime,, it inflated until now the limits of our particular 'patch' could be 10^100 light years or more. Beyond this patch are possibly an infinitude of other 'patches', each with slightly different physical properties. In the remote future, our visible universe will inexorably expand at the speed of light until these distant patches come into view. The smooth and uniform conditions we see around us today, will be replaced by very nonuniform conditions as more of these distant patches come into our horizon. In a truly infinite universe, there will be an infinite number of these patchwork universes.

35
What is on the other side of the expanding universe? Nothing. In general relativity, which provides us with a relativistic theory for gravity and the large-scale geometry of space-time, there are two possibilities for the shape of 3-dimensional space. It is either finite or infinite. If it is finite, then that means that the expansion of the universe is proceeding by a dilation of space so that space folds back upon itself. There is no 'edge in space' in this picture, for much the same reason that the 2-dimensional space on the surface of a ball has no edge but is nevertheless finite. If space is infinite, then it also has no outer boundary so again the expansion produces no receeding edge to space. These are the only two physical solutions for the shape of space which are consistent with how gravity operates as a physical field.

36
Why are galaxies colliding if the universe is expanding? Because individual galaxies don't even 'feel' the effect of the expansion of the universe because they are only influenced by the gravitational fields they feel near them. Within a cluster of galaxies, the gravitational fields of nearby neighbors is more important in determining how they will move that the effects of a far weaker 'cosmological' field. Only at scales of tens of millions of light years do the weaker influences of cosmological expansion become dominant. Even so, two close galaxies are more strongly affected by each other than by the expansion of the universe, but from a distance of a billion light years, we observe the effects of the expansion being more important in the relative motion of these two galaxies which we see colliding. This is a prediction by Big Bang cosmology which is borne out by direct observation. In fact, it predicts that because the early universe was more crowded than now, collisions between galaxies were more frequent billions of years ago than today, and this is what the Hubble Space Telescope shows us is the case.

37
What word is used to describe everything outside our universe?

There are no such terms because our universe is defined mathematically by the single spacetime that was generated by the Big Bang .If other spacetimes exist, then they can never be known to us by any observation, so there is no term to describe them other than 'hypothetical'. They are permanently beyong science to investigate...but not to speculate upon!!!

38
Could an external universe affect part of ours by its gravity? No, because everything that was a part of the genesis of our space time constitutes OUR universe and represents all the locations in space which can ever be observed by us given the remaining age of the universe...even if that is eternity. What you are thinking of as 'other universes' represent hypothetical, separate spacetimes that will never be in contact with events in our spacetime (universe) no matter if our universe expands infinitely. These other universes can never be observed by any experiment within our spacetime and so they are thoroughly beyond our science and our reality.

39
If the universe is infinite, how can there be other universes outside it?

What we know about MATHEMATICAL infinity is that it is so big that an infinite number of individualy infinite objects can exist within 'infinity' without touching. This is like the fact that there are an infinite number of irrational numbers between 0 and 1, but there are also an infinite number of counting numbers from 0, 1, 2 ..... infinity. The subject of Transfinite mathematics is very interesting to explore. We do not know what, if anything, this has to do with how the physical world is put together, so it is better to think in terms of 'patches' of spacetime which are trillions of times bigger than our visible universe, and that spacetime is carpeted with 'a lot' of these patches. It is not a scientific question what REALLY exists out side this.

40
Could there be other universes outside of our own? If our universe is infinite, then you can still have an infinite number of other separate universes outside it because so far as humans understand infinity, it can accomodate an infinite number of infinite things. If the universe is finite...like a ball...then you can think of a bunch of coconuts floating in an infinite ocean, and again you end up with the possibillity of having an infinite number of finite universes embedded in some vaster kind of space. yes there could be other universes out there, but they would be unobservable no matter how old our universe became...even infinitly old!! So, such universes have no meaning to science because there is no experiment we can perform to detect them.

41
Why is the universe expanding if gravity is an attractive force? Because the initial 'explosion' was so violent and energetic that it completely overcame the attractive gravitational forces between the constituents...especially if there was an Inflationary Era where the energy of the vacuum itself produced an enormous positive 'anti-gravity' pressure.

42
Does interstellar dust have anything to do with the cosmological redshift? No. interstellar or even intergalactic reddening just changes the intensity of the light at certain wavelengths. It has no effect upon the wavelengths of spectral lines, and it is this wavelength shift that is called the redshift.

43
If the Big Bang happened at one point, why are galaxies not expanding at different speeds?

The Big Bang did not happen at one point in space .It happened in every point in space at the same time, and according to general relativity, it created space and time itself. It is not a fireworks display at all, or a conventional explosion, so all the rules we intuitively expect such events to follow, are not followed by the Big Bang.

44
If the universe is open, does it have infinite mass? Yes, but this infinite mass is distributed over infinite space too.

45
Does the Oort cloud around every star account for dark matter? No .The amount of mass in these comet clouds is already included when we weigh the Milky Way. They represent an insignificant amount of mass compared to individual stars and so would not contribute much at all.

46
If I see two quasars 15 billion light years from us at opposite parts of the sky, how can the universe be only 10 billion years old when they are 30 billion light years apart? Because the matter that makes up these distant galaxies did not start from where we are and travel to where they now are. This is a basic feature of Big Bang cosmology provided by general relativity. The mater we now see in these distant galaxies originated from regions of space that were far apart even at the Big bang itself. The stretching of space since then now makes them even farther apart. But the matter that makes them up did not physically travel THROUGH the space that literally 'stretched' into existence between them since then.

47
Is there nothingness outside of our visible universe? We don't think so! What exists outside of our visible universe today is probably more of the same of what we see around us right now. The limits to the space that emerged from our Big Bang do not appear until we reach infinity in an 'open' cosmology, or about 60-100 billion light years when we see the backs of our heads in a 'closed' cosmology. Both space-times MAY be embedded in an even larger 'something' but those regions are beyond any space that we can ever explore no mater which cosmology we live in.

48
Why are there so many different estimates for the distances to quasars and the size of the universe? Because each estimate is based on what the particular astronomer chooses to use as the underlying model for the universe. Each of these is defined by its particular Hubble Constant, its density, and its value of the cosmological constant. Each of these 'constants' is not known to very high precision and their differences lead to a range of possible values for distance.

49
If an observed galaxy at 15 billion light years is actually 30 billion light years away, does that mean the universe is twice as old? No, because the galaxy did not get to where it is from here. It was formed far away from the gas that emerged from the Big Bang to become the Milky Way. The age of the universe is still only about 12-15 billion years.

50

If the cosmic background radiation comes from everywhere in space does that mean it has no source?

No. The cosmic background we see now, was emitted by the fireball radiation in the region of space which is now near the edge of our visible universe. Similarly, an observer located 14 billion light years from us today, will be detecting the fireball radiation which was emitted by the dense matter in the space near our Milky Way, but of course, there was no Milky Way present then, just dense hot matter and radiation. Every photon of the CMBR comes from a source which is the ancient hot matter in regions of space far away from us today.

51
If the cosmic background radiation comes from everywhere in space does that mean it has no source? No. The cosmic background we see now, was emitted by the fireball radiation in the region of space which is now near the edge of our visible universe. Similarly, an observer located 14 billion light years from us today, will be detecting the fireball radiation which was emitted by the dense matter in the space near our Milky Way, but of course, there was no Milky Way present then, just dense hot matter and radiation. Every photon of the CMBR comes from a source which is the ancient hot matter in regions of space far away from us today.

52
How do astronomers measure the temperature of the cosmic background radiation without using a thermometer?

They measure its intensity at many wavelengths where it is detectable, then fit a Planck 'black body function' to the measurements. Since each black body curve depends ONLY on temperature, the fit to the data immediately gives you the effective temperature of the radiation, which for the CMBR is 2.7K

53
If all the galaxies are flying away from us, are we in the center of the universe? No because that is not the only way in which you can get the same end result observationally. General relativity provides another interpretation and that is the one that is favored because it 1) is consistent with lots of other types of experimental data and observations and 2) it does not keep alive the philosophical idea that we are somehow in a unique place in the universe. This is what the Copernican Revolution was all about, and it is no longer demanded that Earth be the center of anything. So, since general relativity seems to work, we go with its interpretation that all observers anywhere in the universe would see themselves 'at the center' like ants on the surface os an inflating balloon.

54
How do you calculate the distance to an object at a redshift of 5.0?

I did this exercise over at the Astronomy Cafe in the Ask the Astronomer Cosmology questions archive.

55
Will the limits to the observable universe expand indefinitely? If our universe is destined to expand forever, our observable universe will increase in radius by about 1 light year per year.

56
What is an 'antipode' in cosmology and does one exist in our universe? In any closed cosmological model, every point has a 'mirror' point in the space-like surface. This point is called the antipode, which is a term ancient navigators also used to describe the point farthest away from them on the surface of the Earth. For open or infinite universes there is no such unique point. So far as we know, our universe does not behave like a closed universe and no such point seems to exist for us. Note, every observer will have a different antipode, and you will not be able to see the universe near your antipode unless the light travel distance for light emitted at the Big Bang exactly equals the distance in space to this point. For the present observable model for the universe, if the universe were in fact closed, our antipode is well outside the boundary of our observable universe and will not be visible to us until the universe is 1/2 of its total age.

57
What would an observer outside our visible universe see if they looked in the direction of the Milky Way? They would not see the Milky Way at all, because if the current horizon is 14 billion light years away and our Milky Way formed 13 billion years after the Big Bang, they would only see the galaxies we now see that are 1 billion light years away from us in their direction. These galaxies would appear as very primitive objects. These observers would be able to see many galaxies that we cannot see from where we are because the light would have arrived at their locations, but not at our location yet.

58
Is there any evidence that the Hubble law is not a linear relation between distance and expansion speed? For nearby galaxies out to, say, a few billion light years, the expansion speed is linear based on the best statistical tests and best calibrated data we have. Beyond this we expect to see, and some claim to do so, a change from a linear expansion to a faster rate because the universe was expanding faster long ago, and we would see this 'acceleration' effect in the expansion rates of the most distant galaxies. A very hard measurement, but we should know how big an effect this is in the next few decades as astronomers relentlessly accumulate more data on distant 'Type 1A' supernovae.

59
How is Hubble's Constant derived from Newtonian physics? Assume that the matter within 'R' parsecs from the Milky Way can be approximaed as having an average density 'Rho' in space. Then the mass inside any spherical volume with this radius is: 3 Mass = 4/3 pi R Rho. The escape velocity for a body of mass 'm' at the surface of this spherical volumn is just: Gravitational Potential = Kinetic Energy

G m Mass

---------- = 1/2 m V R

but since V = H R

by Hubble's Law and we have previously derived the

total mass in terms of an average density Rho, a little algebra gives us:

8 pi G Rho -------------3

60
How can we see light from a galaxy 14 billion light years away if the universe is 14 billion years old? Because these objects were always far away from us even at the Big Bang. The light from them has only now reached us across the ever expanding gulf of space that has widened, at some times, at a rate many times faster than our local light speed.

61
Where can I get a book that discusses the cosmic microwave background? The popular books by NASA COBE scientists George Smoot and John Mather are highly recommended and have good introductory chapters on the nature of this radiation.

62
Does Stephen Hawking think the universe is open or closed? I believe this is his preference because he likes closed manifolds which are easier to work with mathematically...and are prettier..than open manifolds. But I cannot speak for what Hawkings thinks these days.

63
If the universe is open and infinite, what is it expanding into? There is no edge to an infinite object so if the universe is truly infinite, its 3dimensional space is not bounded. It can expand, but in doing so it does not displace other space outside it since there is nothing 'outside' of infinity. This sounds like gobbledygook, but this is what the mathematics tells us, and who among us has ANY intuitive idea of what infinity is like?

64
Are redshifts really quantized?

Many astronomers since Geoffery Burbidge in 1968 have claimed to detect periodicities in the redshifts from large numbers of quasars. But a recent review of the evidence pro and con by Douglass Scott at the University of California at Berkeley ( reported in 'The Space Density of Quasars' ASP vol. 21, p. 264) shows that all of the claims are due to small sample sizes and to various well-known biases in assembling them. When the same analysis is performed on a much larger, wellcalibrated sample of quasars called the Large Bright Quasar Survey' absolutely no evidence for periodicities in redshifts can be seen.

65
If the universe exploded from a small piece of space why are distant galaxies moving so fast? Well...it didn't explode from a single patch of 3-dimensional space, but from all the patches of 3-dimensional space that make up the entire 'space' that was born in the Big Bang itself. This is a common misconception that then leads to the second part of your question, which no longer needs to be answered by the particular starting point you used to frame your question.

66
Does the value of Hubble's Constant depend on the galaxies outside our visible universe?

No. By simple physics, the strength of the gravitational field only depends on the amount of mass within a spherical volume of space with the distant galaxies at its outer, mathematical, surface. If you pick any spherical volumes in the universe with a radius up to the radius of the visible universe, add up the mass of the galaxies inside, and divide by the volume, you get an average density for the matter inside the region. Hubble's Constant is then proportional to the square root of this density. It is not affected by the galaxies outside the region you select, because the gravitational forces from all the 'external' galaxies cancils out in the sum over their net force upon the galaxies within the volume you selected.

67
Is the universe expanding the same way in all directions? The measurements by the NASA COBE satellite show that the expansion of the universe has been phenomenally smooth to better than 1/10000 in every direction. Local irregularities are caused by the patina of clusters of galaxies spread through out the local universe.

68
If the ultimate fate of our universe is so bleak, what then is its purpose?

Why does everything have to have a purpose? There is a lot of opportunity for us in a universe with 50 billion more years of 'life'. If we are up to the challenge, we are going to have a lot of fun and exciting time to look forward to. If we are not up to the challenge, we will soon become extinct on a planet whose days are numbered. You choose!!

69
Could the universe be rotating, and if so, with respect to what? The universe can be rotating, but only with general relativity can you really explain how this works even for a closed universe. And even then I don't understand it very well as an astronomer.

70
Has the 'old' age estimate of 10-20 billion years been replaced by a 'new' age estimate of 8-12 billion years for the age of the universe? No. The range of possible ages depending on your method of computing the age ranges from 8 billion years up to 19 or 20. Local measurements seem to favor a number somewhere in-between near 15 billion years.

71
Why is the universe expanding if gravity is an attractive force? Because like a rocket leaving the Earth's surface, the Big Bang gave the matter in the universe a 'kick' that exceeded the gravitational force acting between each particle to draw them in.

72
What will the far future be like? It will end in fire if the universe is destined to recollapse, or it will end in ice, if it is infinite. In the end, in an infinite universe, only an empty eternal vacuum will remain, populated by a few electrons, neutrinos and photons, and their antiparticles.

73
Would Dark matter go away if Newton's Law of Gravity were incorrect at intergalactic distances?

Yes it would according to some astronomers. If you added a new term to Newton's GMm/r^2 which had a weak dependence on the velocity of the bodies, then according to Astronomer Mordecai Milgrom, galaxies would move slightly differently in clusters and so would stars inside galaxies. By adjusting this term 'just right' you can apparently eliminate much or all of the need for dark matter. The problem is that this 'adjustment' violates general relativity and general relativity would have to be reworked or abandoned to account for such a new term in the weak-field, 'Newtonian Limit' to gravity. There is no evidence that general relativity is incorrect based on the other tests that it has passed. Milgrom gravity is an interesting idea, but more has to be done with it to make it testable in other domains. General relativity is testable in many different circumstances. Milgrom gravity only has effects in one arena; and in this arena we cannot make other tests of this theory.

74
How fast is the universe expanding? The best measurement of its local expansion rate is near 70 kilometers/second per megaparsecs. The uncertainty in the local value is about 10 percent. Based on studies of very distant supernova, it looks like the universe is accelerating its expansion because of a new ingredient to space called the 'cosmological constant'. We are only now accumulating enough data on distant galaxies to check this discovery, but if it holds out, it may mean that in as short as 10 billion years, the Milky Way will be alone in the universe. All the other galaxies we see around us today, will have been carried away from us by this accelerating expansion.

75
Have astronomers found galaxies with no redshifts? Yes, and there are galaxies with blue shifts too, but these are ALL very close by so that their local 'peculiar' motions among members within their respective clusters of galaxies, are larger than the cosmological expansion rate given their distance. The Andromeda galaxy is actually blue shifted by some 300 km/sec relative to the Milky Way, but its motion is totally determined by local gravity, and not by cosmology.

76
How do we really know that we are missing 90 percent of the matter in the universe? We can weigh galaxies and notice that their stars are moving too fast given the amount of LUMINOUS matter we see in the stars, but this only accounts for a small part...actually less than 1 percent, of the cosmological 'missing mass'. Depending on the method used to 'weigh' entire clusters of galaxies, even more dark matter is required to keep these systems from flying apart. The upper limit is set by the ASSUMPTION that Inflationary Big Bang cosmology is correct, which requires that the universe be exactly 'critical' and this leads to an amount of missing 'mass' about 50 - 100 times what we see in the galaxies and dark matter halos they have. It is only an estimate, and relies on how well you believe Inflationary cosmology.

77
How is it possible that, looking out at the universe in any direction, that this lets us see what happened at the Big Bang which was a specific point in space? Because, and it helps to repeat this over and over like a mantra, the Big Bang did not emerge from a single point in our universe 'out there'. Each point in space was the origin of the Big Bang, says general relativity. So, the distant images we see, are the lights from innumerable ' Big Bangs' whose collective light we now see as it arrives at our location. The light emitted from our location at the Big Bang is similarly enroute to galaxies near our current horizon distance. There is nothing strange about this. You just have to STOP thinking that the Big Bang happened out there in space.

78
How big is the universe? We can only estimate the size of the visible universe, and this seems to be between 10 - 20 billion light years in radius depending on the age of the universe you take. Cosmologically, general relativity says that there is a lot more universe beyond the horizon of our visible universe. The actual amount of universe out there could be infinite. As the universe gets older and older, light can travel farther across space, so the size of our visible universe increases by 1 light year per year.

79
If the Big Bang happened in an infinite nothingness, the universe must have an expanding edge, right? This is an impossible situation to think about unless you understand general relativity. We have no idea what 'happened' before the Big Bang, but whatever this state was, it is like nothing you or I can intuitively imagine with brains designed to hunt wildebeasts on the planes of Africa. If space is curved back upon itself like general relativity demands be the case for a closed universe, it has NO edge in space! Period! It is not expanding into some larger space, because all the space there is is bent around to form a seamless surface. This surface exists in a truly unfathomable 'something' which is not of itself 3dimensional space. There are many mathematical 'embedding' diagrams you can construct logically to describe this situation, but none allow us to be outside 3-dimensional space to view the result, and such a perspective may not even make logical sense.

80
Can we find a center to the Big Bang by looking at how distant quasars are moving? No. The universe is expanding in a way that is consistent with it having no unique center in 3-dimensional space. Every point in space was the 'center' of the Big Bang, and since then, space has been continuously dilating as time has gone on. The motions of the distant quasars, and the light from the Big Bang itself show no unique center in space.

81
Does the universe really have a top and a bottom as was recently discovered? It's too soon to tell until a more extensive survey can be carried out independently. If you do not use enough data, statistically, you can 'discover' all kinds of strange things. I suspect that any discovery of a top or a bottom to the universe is in that league. Be patient. If it is real, we will be able to rediscover this effect using other kinds of data to corroborate the original findings.

82
What is the universe expanding into? If it is infinite, it has no boundary in space so it is not expanding into anything. If it is finite, like the surface of a ball, then space is closed upon itself and again it is not expanding into anything that is space-like. This all sounds like a bunch of contradictions, but it is not, and the mathematics are pretty clear about this process. The problem is that our intuitions are not a valid basis upon which to frame the correct question and to understand the answer. Space stretches, and galaxies get further away from each other, but this happens without displacing something else.

83
How can a galaxy be 8 - 10 billion light years away, but still be 100 million years old and be detectable today? Because the light started on its journey to get to us when the galaxy was only 100 million years old. During the last 8 - 10 billion years, the expansion of the universe has carried the galaxy so far away from us that we are only now seeing the light from this galaxy, and the light we see is the image of the galaxy when it was 100 million years old and bright enough to see at this great distance.

84
How fast is the visible universe expanding? The visible horizon to the universe expands at exactly the speed of light.

85
Why isn't the night filled with stars as bright as the daytime sky?

Because there are not that many stars and galaxies in our universe, plus the universe has only been around for a limited time and we can only see a small part of all the galaxies and stars that exist. This is called Olber's Paradox.

86
What is a 'light horizon' and does this mean there are things in the universe permanently hidden from us? A light horizon in the universe defines the extent of the visible universe. The soonest that light signals could have been sent out after the Big Bang is AT the moment of the Big Bang itself. That happened about 15 billion years ago. So, around every spot in the universe, there is a limit to how far light can have traveled from that spot in the entire present lifetime of the universe. But, these horizons expand at the speed of light, so that in 10 more billion years, we will be able to see objects out to a distance of 15 + 10 = 25 billion light years. We will see these objects as they were 25 billion years ago at that future epoch. So far as we are concerned right now, yes there are objects now in existence beyond our visible horizon distance of 15 billion light years, which probably look much like galaxies nearby us, but we will not be able to see them in our lifetimes, or for billions of years to come. They are not permanently hidden so far as the future is concerned, but for humans they are as good as hidden.

87
What does the 'anisotropy' of the cosmic background radiation tell astronomers?

It tells us how lumpy matter was when the universe was so young that galaxies and stars had not yet formed. These lumps are believed to be the 'seeds' which caused some parts of the matter in the Big Bang to eventually collapse into proto-galaxies or fragments of galaxies when the universe was about 10 million years old or so. It is very important to detect these irregularities in order to test the details of Big Bang cosmology at a time when much of the fate of the structure of the universe was 'frozen into' the way matter was flowing.

88
Do galaxies travel parallel to each other, or in a way that can be used to figure out where the Big Bang happened in space? No. Galaxies buzz around like swarming bees in a hive, however, some of these hives are falling into others that are more massive, and there may also be very large-scale 'flows' of galaxies spanning 100s of millions of light years across. Rivers of galaxy clusters! As for the origin of the universe. You cannot ever point to a spot in the sky and say that it was the origin of the universe because 1) this is not supported by observational evidence, 2)The universe is expanding by having its 3-D space 'stretch' between galaxies and 3)The COBE data conclusively shows that there is no origin spot for our universe anywhere inside our visible universe in agreement with Big Bang cosmology. Like the surface of an expanding balloon, the center of the expansion in NOT inside the surface of the balloon.

89
I recently heard there is a unique direction to space. What does this mean? Apparently, a team of radio astronomers studying the polarized light they received from distant quasars discovered that there was a definite pattern to how, and in what direction, this light was polarized across the sky. From electromagnetic theory, they inferred that there was a unique axis to the universe such that when light traveled at various angles to this direction from the distant quasars, the polarization changed in a specific way. If true, this would be very exciting, and a new piece of cosmological data. The problem is that polarized light can be affected by the interstellar medium inside the quasars, in intergalactic space, and most importantly in the Milky Way. If you do not do the analysis carefully or with enough quasars, you can generate spurious patterns that you then infer have something to do with the quasar's sky location. Much more work needs to be done to corroborate this effect.

90
How were the distances to the Hubble Deep Field galaxies determined?

First you measure the redshift to the object using spectroscopic techniques or a new broad-band photometric technique. Then, GIVEN an assumption about the value for Hubble's Constant, the Cosmological Constant, and the value of Omega which measures how close to the critical density the universe is, you consult the appropriate Big Bang model to convert from redshift to distance. There are, however, many different types of distance specified by relativistic cosmology: Luminosity distance, angular diameter distance, metric distance so you have to decide which of these is the more meaningful for the point you are making.

91
If the Hubble Deep Field shows galaxies 14 billion light years away, is the edge of the universe 28 billion light years distant? No, the edge of our visible universe is slightly beyond this distance at about 15 or 16 billion light years give or take. It depends on the exact type of cosmological model you have assumed in calculating the distances.

92
How do we know the universe can expand faster than light if we can never see it?

Faster than light expansion refers to what the universe was doing when it was very very young. It does not do that now because the expansion has been slowing down lo these many billions of years! FTL expansion is a PREDICTION made by Big Bang cosmology. It has never been observed, but to get to the kind of universe we live in today, from a more compressed state, the universe would have had to expanded like that according to general relativity. But it is space that is expanding to increase the distances, the galaxies themselves do not move across space at FTL speeds!

93
How do galaxies get the energy to escape each other according to Hubble's Theory? Well...It isn't Hubble's Theory. Hubble did not propose any cosmological models for the universe. He 'only' made the confirming observation that the universe was expanding. Galaxies continue to separate from one another because of the momentum of the expansion of the universe. This momentum came from the Big Bang itself.

94
Stephen Hawking says the universe has no boundary, so what is it that is expanding?

Space is dilating everywhere, but the entire space is wrapped or warped around to form a closed, edgeless surface. What Hawking is referring to, however, is that the universe didn't require any special conditions or what mathematicians call 'boundary conditions' to define it. That kind of boundary is not the same as a physical boundary, although it MAY include a physical boundary as a consequence!

95
If the universe is expanding, it has a boundary, so what is at the boundary? The universe is expanding. This is what we OBSERVE. If the universe is infinite, it has no edge at all even though the space between every particle may be increasing. If the universe is 'closed' like the SURFACE of a ball, then space doesn't have an edge either, but the size of the ball IN TIME is increasing so space is stretching. The only apparent boundary we ever see is our light horizon which defines the farthest object we can see if that object emitted its light towards us at the instant of the Big Bang. But this is not a solid barrier, merely a peculiar optical illusion found in every universe that had a definite origin moment in time.

96
What are the consequences of the universe having a preferred axis?

It means that space-time is not uniform in all directions in the universe. It means that light will travel in slightly different ways depending on its direction of motion with respect to such an axis. It means that the Big Bang was not PERFECTLY uniform. The detailed implications depend on just how strong this 'anisotropy' is.

97
Why does it make a difference is a neutrino has a rest mass if it carries energy anyway? Because rest mass is the only energy it has by E = mc^2. It isn't a wave so it doesn't get more energetic with frequency like light does.

98
What are the speculations about the future of the universe?

If astronomers determine that it is destined to collapse, this means that in something like 20 billion years from now the expansion will have slowed to a stop and begun to reverse in a collapse phase that will last until about 50 billion years from now when the Big Crunch will happen. The universe will get much warmer from its 2.7 K today to billions of degrees within the last few minutes. Galaxies will be torn asunder about 1- 5 billion years before the Big Crunch, and the stars themselves will cease to exist within 1 million years before the Big Crunch. Stars will become the coolest objects in the universe about 1 million years before the Big Crunch. If the universe is destined to expand forever, in about 10 trillion years, all of the stars will 'go out' with no new ones formed as the interstellar medium is eliminated and only degenerate stellar cinders are left. Beyond that era, nothing more can really be said because the times scales for anything new and interesting to happen then become of order 10^30 to 10^40 years when protons may decay away into electrons and neutrinos, and 10^60 years when stellar-mass black holes evaporate by the Hawking Process. Pretty bleak for life.

99
Is the expansion of the universe slowing down right now? Prior to about 1998, the evidence seemed to indicate that the expansion of the universe is slowing down. But since then, several groups have clamed from studies of distant supernovae that the expansion is accelerating, not slowing down at all.

100
Will astronomers need the cosmological constant to reconcile the ages of old stars and the universe? This would do the trick if you were still hell-bent that the universe had to have Omega = 1.0000, but if you relax this requirement and say that there isn't really that much Dark Matter in the universe, then you can easily accommodate the expansion rate/age with the age of the oldest stars in globulars, for a low-Omega universe near Omega = 0.1 In other words, there may still be enough Dark Matter to make galaxies sensible systems, dynamically, but that the combination of Dark+Luminous matter is still Omega = 0.1 or 0.2 tops. This would be consistent with the primordial ( baryonic ) element abundances, and you would not need a cosmological constant at all. I favor this simple solution observationally, but this means that since Omega would not equal 1.000, that the inflationary Big Bang cosmology is no longer valid and that would be a shame since it seems to provide explanations for other phenomena in observational cosmology such as why the cosmic background radiation is so uniform at scales greater than the horizon scale.

101
How is it possible for the energy in the cosmic background radiation to remain constant as the universe expands? Because the cosmological expansion is adiabatic. This means that the following holds:

3 n(photons/cc) * R = constant

for every epoch, where n is the total number of photons that make up the Planck distribution of the cosmic background radiation field. This is constant because there are no large-scale processes that can create or destroy photons in the background radiation field. Now, to define a total energy, we can multiply by the energy per photon, e = h x frequency. But because of the expansion of the universe the frequency of each photon varies as wavelength = wavelength(0) * R

so

freq = freq(0) / R

This is because space is stretching the wavelengths more and more as time goes on and R increases. If you now compute constant n = -------3 R

you get

E=e*N

-4 E = E(0) R ergs/cc

Since we are still talking about Planck spectra, if you integrate the spectrum over frequency, you get the Stephan-Boltzman Law which says the total energy is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature. But from general relativity, KT / h*frequency = constant

and so

T = T(0) / R

( alternately, T = T(0) x (1 + z) )

The net result is that both sides of the above equation are proportional to the fourth power of the scale factor at a given epoch. This means that the total energy of the CMBR defined in this way is independent of the epoch and scale factor. This is what we mean by 'adiabatic expansion' since the total energy of the system remains constant.

102
Why isn't an oscillating universe very likely?

So far as the data we have in-hand is concerned, it isn't even very likely that the universe is destined to collapse in the future. There is no convincing evidence that shows the universe has 'greater than critical' density for this to happen. As for the inevitability of a 'bounce' after a future Big Crunch, this requires following the universe as its space-time evolves beyond a future Singularity phase. We do not know how to do this. In fact, all we can guess is that the universe enters some kind of quantum state like the one it emerged from at the Big Bang. We have no way of predicting the properties of a universe than emerges from such a state, nor do we know if such a forecast is even possible theoretically. Any argument that you might have about how reasonable an Oscillatory Universe is, is based on intuitions about how nature works that are mostly irrelevant at the extreme conditions that will prevail at the time of the 'bounce'. General relativity promises an oscillatory universe as one of the many solutions of the universe, but we have know since the 1920s that 'classical' general relativity must give way to a self-consistent quantum theory of gravity. In even the simplest versions of such a theory, time no longer behaves as a continuous parameter through the quantum regime. This is why we say that spacer and time come to an end at the Big Bang, just as they will at any future Big Crunch. They cannot be 'analytically continued' as real-valued variables beyond these endstates, so there is no time axis on which to symmetrically construct an oscillating universe beyond the present expansion/contraction event...if contraction will even occur in the future which seems very doubtful.

103
What is the universe a part of?

We do not know. All we know is that portion that we can see out to the limits of the so-called visible universe. Beyond that limit, we can only use our best theoretical models to speculate on what is beyond.

104
Is the total energy of the universe decreasing because of the redshift? No. You can think of this energy as being transferred from kinetic into gravitational potential energy. For an infinite but 'flat' universe with Omega = 1.000, this transfer will be complete so that after an eternity, the energy will be totally in gravitational potential energy. For an infinite but 'hyperbolic' universe, there will still be a slight amount of kinetic energy left over after eternity. As for the cosmic background radiation, its energy remains te same, its just that the peak of its energy slides from gamma-ray energies to longer and longer wavelengths as the universe gets older.

105
If space increased faster than light moments after the Big Bang, why do we see anything near us in space at all?

Because space dilation does not occur at EVERY scale. Local matter can provide a stronger local gravitational field than the rest of the universe so that the local dynamics of space are not affected by the global dilation...honest. We see this effect even today because the cosmological expansion only 'wins' at scales of several megaparsecs or larger. For smaller regions, the local gravitational field is what's important.

106
Are galaxies only moving apart of is there a sideways 'flow' to them as well? At the largest scales, where the rate of cosmological expansion is measured in 10s of thousands of kilometers/sec, the random motions of galaxies inside their local clusters ( 300 - 1000 km/sec) is unimportant, and at these 'cosmological scales' ( 10,000/65 = 150 megaparsecs or larger) the motion is expected to be with-theflow of the expansion. However, there have been a few studies that have claimed to have detected a 'non-Hubble' flow to the most distant galaxies out to 300 megaparsecs. The flow of our local universe may not be completely random, but may have a systematic direction towards the so- called Great Attractor. If this is eventually confirmed, it could indicate that the universe at the largest scales is not expanding exactly the way a truly uniform, Big Bang would have predicted. Still, these motions are produced by gravitational forces, and at a current age of something like 15 billion years, there has been more than enough time for deviations from Big Bang expansion to have built-up over scales of 1 billion light years or more! What will settle this is better observations, because the Great Attractor flow is based on the speeds of only a few dozen large clusters of galaxies. Also, computer modeling will be able to tell us what kind of flow speeds we could expect to detect in a realistic universe model, and at a particular scale. This kind of work is just beginning, so we will have to wait and see.

107
Does Stephen Hawking think the universe is open or closed? I believe this is his preference because he likes closed manifolds which are easier to work with mathematically...and are prettier..than open manifolds. But I cannot speak for what Hawkings thinks these days.